Dear Temple Sinai community:

We are all shocked by today's events at the Boston Marathon, even while we continue to learn more about the situation. At this moment, I can report that, as far as we know, all Temple Sinai members who were runners in the marathon, their family members, or medical care workers in the area are all safe. Some Sinai runners who had not yet reached the finish line were escorted home and are fine, and at least one Temple Sinai member who was overseeing medical stations near the finish line has been evacuated to the Boston Common. Many are still waiting to return home, but, as of now, we can be grateful that, at least so far, all members of our community are unhurt and are safe.

We would be grateful to hear from those Sinai members who were marathon runners today, or who were near the finish line at the time of the explosions -- if you were in the area, please send an email to confirm that you are unhurt.

Meanwhile, our hearts ache for the victims of these terrible events on this day. Our thoughts and prayers turn to the them and to their families. We reach out to those who lost loved ones, and we offer them our heartfelt consolations, and we pray for those who have been injured, that they and their families will be blessed with strength.

We all need strength at a time like this. Our community will gather for a brief prayer service, an opportunity for us to offer support to one another, and to seek comfort with one another through prayer and music in a short service, tomorrow, Tuesday evening, April 16, at 5:30pm, in the Sanctuary at Temple Sinai. I hope you can join us to gather as a community tomorrow at 5:30pm. (Stay tuned for more information.)

Tonight, we ask everyone to follow the safety instructions of Gov. Patrick, to get home safely and remain home, and to be in touch with your loved ones.

May God bless us all with strength and courage, and allow us to affirm what is good in our lives and the world, as we continue to cope with today's events.

- Rabbi Andy Vogel

Parashat Shoftim (Deuteronomy 16:18 – 21:9)
August 31, 2011 

Reflections on the Torah Portion – Rabbi Andy Vogel

Crowds of over 300,000 Israelis have taken to the streets in recent weeks in protests about social issues.  In the days ahead this week (usually, these protests are scheduled to convene Saturday evenings as Shabbat ends), an estimated one million Israelis are expected to gather once more to continue these protests.  During the last week my family and I were in Israel in late June, the movement began, first as an outcry against the price of cottage cheese, of all things, but then developed and grew into protests against the costs of basic needs for all Israelis: food, housing, health care, child-care and education, and large “tent cities” sprung up on the medians of Tel Aviv’s major city streets, a characteristic which caught on in other cities as well. 

    The rallying cry of the organizers has used words that echo this week’s Torah portion: tzedek chevrati, in Hebrew, or “social justice.”  (This could also be translated as “justice across society.”)  Parashat Shoftim, our week’s Torah portion, begins using very similar words, saying, “Justice, justice shall your pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land” (Deut. 16:20), originally meant as an exhortation to judges to judge fairly, but extended in its meaning over the centuries as an obligation for Jews to work to create true justice, throughout society – justice in economic terms, distributive justice, as well as retributive justice.  Israel today struggles with inequalities much like other Western capitalist economies, and this summer’s protesters have adopted phrases drawn from the Torah and from Jewish tradition to express their yearning to address the large economic gaps within society.  That Jewish values and teachings can inform Israelis working to correct Israeli society’s flaws reminds us of the power of the Torah, that perhaps its idealism is not naive, but that it can touch our lives and build a better world.

-           Rabbi Andy Vogel

To read more, click to this article from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/world/middleeast/06israel.html?_r=1&scp=6&sq=israel%20social%20justice&st=cse 

Or this article from the JTA: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/08/08/3088900/reform-backs-israeli-protests 

Handwriting on the Wall
August 24, 2011

Construction on the separation barrier in Al-Walaje

A minor headline in today’s newspaper is especially troubling to me as I write this morning (Aug. 24, 2011).  The Palestinian village of Al-Walajeh, just southwest of Bethlehem on the border of Jerusalem, had appealed to Israel’s Supreme Court to have the route of the concrete separation barrier moved, on grounds that the wall would completely encircle and smother the village, and yesterday, Israel’s highest court rejected their appeal.  I visited Al-Walajeh during my recent sabbatical in Israel, and met with Sheerin Alaraj, a passionate and articulate Palestinian woman who serves on Al-Walajeh’s local town council, who described their efforts to win approval of the courts in Israel, and gave me a tour of the village.  First stop on the tour was the house of Sheerin and her family, which overlooks a beautiful valley and the Judean hills beyond.  But because there is an Israeli access road to a nearby West Bank Jewish settlement, the administration plans to construct large cement barrier just a few short meters from her home, blocking her view and her access to the valley and lands.  When I encountered Sheerin, her anger and frustration were clear, and yet, I also heard in her story a glimmer of hope that Israel could deal justly with their village.  Today, the newspapers report that the village’s appeals have been rejected, and so Sheerin’s is just one of the many painful stories to be told in this village.

Town councilwoman Sheerin Alaraj

Panoramic view of the house of Ms. Alaraj, which will be blocked by a concrete wall

     In other cases, Israel’s Supreme Court has bravely changed the route of the wall-barrier on humanitarian grounds.  The Israeli authorities have, occasionally, responded compassionately to appeals, and moved the route of barrier (which in some places is a concrete wall, and in others a network of electronic fences).  One such celebrated case was featured in the documentary film, “Budrus,” which shows how Palestinians used non-violent community organizing to win over the Israeli public and the courts.  There is little question in most Israelis’ minds that the barrier has proven effective in reducing terrorist attacks inside Israel.  But some Palestinians that I met held deep convictions that Israel was using the barrier to expropriate lands and effectively change the actual border in certain key spots.  I have the feeling that each case is different, depending on the local situation and geography.  Either way, the entire situation is deeply painful: painful to see Palestinians suffering and growing angrier with the construction of each kilometer, painful to hear Israel accused of using these tactics (founded or unfounded), painful to see the destruction of land and environment by this ugly wall, and especially painful that two peoples trust each other so little and that the conflict deepens and intensifies with each day’s newspaper stories.    

-       Rabbi Andy Vogel

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/arab-villagers-lose-court-battle-against-jerusalem-fence-route-1.380325
see also:  
http://www.justvision.org/budrus
 

A New Trend among Secular Israelis

The common wisdom about Israeli Jews is that there are two kinds:  secular and religious.  If you’re a secular Israeli Jew, this line of thinking goes, you live in Tel Aviv, and have little connection to Jewish tradition:  Yom Kippur for secular Israelis means a day spent at the beach; Shabbat might include a family dinner, but singing blessings isn’t a part of it; when secular Israelis study the Bible in school-children, they primarily study the books telling about Joshua’s conquest of the land.  Religion among Israeli Jews, on the other hand, is usually stereotyped as Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox, isolated from modern society and rigidly halakhic (adhering to Jewish law).

     I discovered that some of these stereotypes are cracking in Israel today.  During my sabbatical, I experienced a number of very interesting spiritual communities and met their leaders who might describe themselves as religious, but also as secular – perhaps as somewhere in between these two poles.  Dozens of prayer communities have been formed to celebrate Shabbat evening, which do so in a creative, spiritually-attuned non-Orthodox way.  (This is beyond what the Israeli Reform movement has already created.)  One community, called Niggun HaLev (“melody of the heart”), meets in the social hall room at a secular moshav of Nahalal and 

Israeli musician Etti Ankri now sings about Jewish religious themes

uses instruments for beautiful music for Shabbat evening prayers each week; many of those in attendance would otherwise call themselves secular, but they are regular attendees at Kabbalat Shabbat services each Friday.  At least forty communities similar to this one have formed over the past decade.  One community, Beit Tefilah Yisraeli, meets on the Tel Aviv beach each Friday night for Shabbat services, and draws hundreds of people each week.

Tel Aviv's "Beit Tefilah Yisraeli": Shabbat services on the beach

      Another example:  I attended a dedication party / concert for a new Hebrew book of secular poems on prayer (!), called Kirvat Makom; in between readings of the poems, a major Israeli musician, formerly secular, named Etti Ankri came to the stage to perform her songs of the prayer-poetry of Spanish Jewish poet Yehuda HaLevi (12^th century).  I became friendly with a rabbi, formerly ultra-Orthodox, who now leads a creative Jewish renewal community on a moshav near Haifa, at Beit Oren, focusing on meditation and the human attribute of love and caring, whose Ark is in the shape of a teepee.  All throughout Israel, there is renewed interest in the spiritual teachings of Judaism, as they might apply to modern life for secular Israelis, and this phenomenon has been documented by Israeli scholar Yair Sheleg.  Perhaps soon these two dichotomous two terms, secular and religious, might one day be replaced with a new conceptual norm that will describe most Israelis: “incorporating Jewish tradition and spirituality into our daily lives.”

-       Rabbi Andy Vogel

Watch this YouTube clip of musicians from "Nava Tehilla" (a Jerusalem alternative synagogue) singing "L'cha Dodi": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhPLDLAMQLg&feature=related

Listen to this YouTube clip of "Niggun HaLev" community, on the Nahalal moshav, singing words from Psalm  98:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVO4KDDDDXI
Watch singer Etti Ankri sing her version of  Yehudah HaLevi's poem "B'chol Libi": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK8d9gmap8M

Environmentalism at Kibbutz Lotan  (a Reform kibbutz)

 
When a small group of Israeli and American Reform Jews, most of whom were in their 20s, founded Kibbutz Lotan deep in the southern Arava desert of Israel in the mid-1980s, I’m sure that none of them imagined how innovative the kibbutz would become today.  Lotan was started some twenty-five years ago as an idealistic community dedicated to communal living, egalitarianism, the spirit of Zionism and settling the Land of Israel, and also creative and vibrant Reform Judaism.  Among its founders were guitar-playing American Jews who grew up in NFTY (the Reform youth movement) and gone to Reform Jewish summer camps, and then made the decision to join with Israelis and make aliyah to live in Israel.  Renewing Progressive Judaism in Israel was as important to the kibbutz members as growing dates and milking cows.  But no one could have predicted that their commitment to Reform Jewish values would lead them to develop Lotan into a center for cutting-edge environmental living, studies and training.

   .  My family and I visited Kibbutz Lotan in April, just before the intense heat begins (it can easily reach 120 degrees once summer arrives this far south in Israel, about a 30-minute drive from Eilat).  I had lived on Lotan twenty years ago, and still have many friends on the kibbutz.  We were amazed at the tour a young kibbutz member gave us – we learned how Lotan focuses today on “earthcare,” an ethical way of living by caring for the planet, and interprets from the Biblical verse that instructs humans “to till and tend the earth” the concept of a “permaculture” (permanent agriculture) that is sustainable in every way possible.  To build its permaculture, the kibbutz builds all its new buildings from all-natural and alternative materials, and has built an entire “eco-campus” on its grounds.  It has developed advanced ways of composting and recycling for growing food.  Through its composting and recycling efforts, the kibbutz has reduced its overall waste disposal by 70% each year.  And the kibbutz has built a training program, “Green Apprenticeships,” that provide college credit in environmental studies, teaching a new generation about local food production, ecological design, renewable energy and sustainable technologies.  In this new phase of its growth, the members of Kibbutz Lotan are keeping alive their idealism, and they continue to make Reform Judaism thrive through caring for our world.

That's me on Kibbutz Lotan: 1992 & 2011

To read more about Kibbutz Lotan, click to http://reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=1529

Mt. Arbel        

Going hiking in Israel is always a walk through Jewish history. In March, one of my daughters and I hiked up the cliffs at Mt. Arbel, a giant crevice near the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) in Israel’s north. The hike is relatively easy, but the footing is close to the cliff’s edge; and when we reached the top, we were rewarded with a breathtaking view. We could easily see the hills of the Golan Heights across the sea, and in the distance, snow-capped Mount Hermon, Israel’s highest peak; below we saw the multi-colored fields of kibbutzim and moshavim founded nearly a century ago, and small Arab villages of the Galilee. And, as in every spot in Israel, we discovered that Arbel’s cliffs conceal the story of Jews who lived (and died) here more than 2,000 years ago.

. First, we encountered the ruins of an ancient synagogue from the 3^rd century; carved into the stone is a round niche that points to Jerusalem in which the Torah scrolls were kept. Then, we learned that caves in the Arbel cliffs were places of refuge for the Jews who rebelled against the King Herod and his Roman soldiers around the year 39 BCE. Herod’s men could not force the Jews out of the caves until he devised a system to lower his soldiers down on platforms with pulleys from above and smoke out the Jews hiding in the caves. Later, in the great Jewish Revolt (66-70 CE), Jews again hid in these caves. Finally, shortly after the State of Israel was declared, a group of Jews originally from Romania reclaimed this location by founding a moshav (collective settlement) in 1949, and live there today thriving off of small industry, orchards, a dairy, and tourism.

Friday, April 15, 2011
Erev Pesach
Jerusalem

Dear Members of Temple Sinai:

I offer you my greetings from Israel, and wishes to you all for a very happy Pesach holiday! As you can imagine, preparations for Passover throughout Israel are very exciting, with school children out for a 2 1/2 week vacation period and many people traveling, the whole country cleaning and preparing for Seder, much discussion of which restaurants are kosher for Passover, and much of the population speaking the language of freedom from liberation.

My family and I will be telling the story of the Hagaddah in Jerusalem this year -- so the final line of the Seder, "Next year in Jerusalem!" is a literal reality for us. In truth, however, Israelis have added a key word to that line, so here at the end of the Seder we will say, "Next year in a Jerusalem Rebuilt," with the clear implication that not just Jerusalem, but the entire world, is still far from our dream of completion and perfection, that we still have much work to do to reach our vision of Tikkun Olam, a world repaired and liberated. Yet, we taste of that dream as we retell our people's ancient story of redemption from slavery.

From our sabbatical experience in Israel, my family and I wish you and your dear ones a very happy Pesach!

- Rabbi Andy Vogel